In her soft contralto voice that gave nothing away, Marina said, “Derek, hi.”
It was in the 1980’s, in an era of celebrity-scandal trials, that Marina Dyer made her reputation as a ‘brilliant’ criminal defence lawyer; by being in fact brilliant, and by working very hard, and by playing against type. There was the audacity of drama in her positioning of herself in a male-dominated courtroom. There was the startling fact of her physical size: she was a ‘petite’ size five, self-effacing, shy seeming, a woman easy to overlook, though it would not be to your advantage to overlook her. She was meticulously and unglamorously groomed in a way to suggest a lofty indifference to fashion, an air of timelessness. She wore her sparrow-coloured hair in a French twist, ballerina style; her favoured suits were Chanels in subdued harvest colours and soft dark cashmere wools, the jackets giving some bulk to her narrow frame, the skirts always primly to midcalf. Her shoes, handbags, briefcases, were of exquisite Italian leather, expensive but understated. When an item began to show signs of wear, Marina replaced it with an identical item from the same Madison Avenue shop. Her slightly askew left eye, which some in fact had found charming, she’d long ago had corrected with surgery. Her eyes were now direct, sharply focused. A perpetually moist, shiny dark-brown, with a look of fanaticism at times, but an exclusively professional fanaticism, a fanaticism in the service of her clients, whom she defended with a legendary fervour. A small woman, Marina acquired size and authority in public arenas. In a courtroom, her normally reedy, indistinct voice acquired volume, timbre. Her passion seemed to be aroused in direct proportion to the challenge of presenting a client as ‘not guilty’ to reasonable jurors, and there were times (her admiring fellow professionals joked about this) that her plain, ascetic face shone with the luminosity of Bernini’s St. Teresa in her ecstasy. Her clients were martyrs, their prosecutors persecutors. There was a spiritual urgency to Marina Dyer’s cases impossible for jurors to explain afterward, when their verdicts were sometimes questioned. You would have had to be there, to near her, to know.
Marina’s first highly publicized case was her successful defence of a U.S. congressman from Manhattan who’d been charged with criminal extortion and witness tampering; her second was the successful, if controversial, defence of a black performance artist charged with rape and assault of a druggie-fan who’d come uninvited to his suite at the Four Seasons. There had been a prominent, photogenic Wall Street trader charged with embezzlement, fraud, obstruction of justice; there had been a woman journalist charged with attempted murder in the shooting-wounding of a married lover; there had been lesser-known but still meritorious cases, rich with challenge. Marina’s clients were not invariably acquitted but their sentences, given their probable guilt, were considered lenient. Sometimes they spent no time in prison at all, only in halfway houses; they paid fines, did community service. Even as Marina Dyer shunned publicity, she reaped it. After each victory, her fees rose. Yet she was not avaricious, nor even apparently ambitious. Her life was her work, and her work her life. Of course, she’d been dealt a few defeats, in her early career when she’d sometimes defended innocent or quasi-innocent people, for modest fees. With the innocent you risk emotions, breakdown, stammering at crucial moments on the witness stand. You risk the eruption of rage, despair. With accomplished liars, you know you can depend upon a performance. Psychopaths are best: they lie fluently, but they believe.
Marina’s initial interview with Derek Peck, Jr., lasted for several hours and was intense, exhausting. If she took him on, this would be her first murder trial; this seventeen-year-old boy her first accused murderer. And what a brutal murder: matricide. Never had she spoken with, in such intimate quarters, a client like Derek Peck. Never had she gazed into, for long wordless moments, any eyes like his. The vehemence with which he stated his innocence was compelling. The fury that his innocence should be doubted was mesmerising. Had this boy killed, in such a way?-‘transgressed’?-violated the law, which was Marina Dyer’s very life, as if it were of no more consequence than a paper bag to be crumpled in the hand and tossed away? The back of Lucille Peck’s head had literally been smashed in by an estimated twenty or more blows of the golf club. Inside her bathrobe, her soft naked-flaccid body had been pummelled, bruised, bloodied; her genitals furiously lacerated. An unspeakable crime, a crime in violation of taboo. A tabloid crime, thrilling even at second or third hand.
In her new Chanel suit of such a purplish-plum wool it appeared black as a nun’s habit, in her crisp chignon that gave to her profile an Avedon-lupine sharpness, Marina Dyer gazed upon the boy who was Lucy Siddons’s son. It excited her more than she would have wished to acknowledge. Thinking, I am unassailable, I am untouched. It was the perfect revenge.
Lucy Siddons. My best friend, I’d loved her. Leaving a birthday card and a red silk square scarf in her locker, and it was days before she remembered to thank me though it was a warm thank-you, a big-toothed genuine smile. Lucy Siddons who was so popular, so at ease and emulated among the snobbish girls at Finch. Despite a blemished skin, buck teeth, hefty thighs, and waddling-duck walk for which she was teased, so lovingly teased. The secret was, Lucy had personality. That mysterious X-factor which, if you lack it, you can never acquire it. If you have to ponder it, it’s out of your reach forever. And Lucy was good, good hearted. A practicing Christian from a wealthy Manhattan Episcopal family famed for their good works. Waving to Marina Dyer to come sit with her and her friends in the cafeteria, while her friends sat stonily smiling; choosing scrawny Marina Dyer for her basketball team in gym class, while the others groaned. But Lucy was good, so good. Charity and pity for the despised girls of Finch spilled like coins from her pockets.
Did I love Lucy Siddons those three years of my life, yes I loved Lucy Siddons like no one since. But it was a pure, chaste love. A wholly one-sided love.
5.
His bail had been set at $350,000, the bond paid by his distraught father. Since the recent Republican election-sweep it appeared that capital punishment would soon be reinstated in New York State, but at the present time there was no murder-one charge, only murder-two for even the most brutal and/or premeditated crimes. Like the murder of Lucille Peck, about which there was, regrettably, so much local publicity in newspapers, magazines, on television and radio, Marina Dyer began to doubt her client could receive a fair trial in the New York City area. Derek was hurt, incredulous: “Look, why would I kill her, I was the one who loved her!” he whined in a childish voice, lighting up another cigarette out of his mashed pack of Camels. “-I was the only fucking one who loved her in the fucking universe!” Each time Derek met with Marina he made this declaration, or a variant. His eyes flamed with tears of indignation, moral outrage. Strangers had entered his house and killed his mother and he was being blamed! Could you believe it! His life and his father’s life torn up, disrupted like a tornado had blown through! Derek wept angrily, opening himself to Marina as if he’d slashed his breastbone to expose his raging palpitating heart.
Profound and terrible moments that left Marina shaken for hours afterward.
Marina noted, though, that Derek never spoke of Lucille Peck as my mother or Mother but only as her, she. When she’d happened to mention to him that she’d known Lucille, years ago in school, the boy hadn’t seemed to hear. He’d been frowning, scratching at his neck. Marina repeated gently, “Lucille was an outstanding presence at Finch. A dear friend.” But still Derek hadn’t seemed to hear.